Yes. You see: the graphs provided by the survey company showed most surfers hovering around the 100 (average) mark with IE users slightly below, FF users slightly above, and none of them sufficiently high to qualify for higher education (125). Whoever did that survey, bogus or real, did a good job.

Firefox users must not be lumped together with IE users. Oh noes! Not even if they're all running the same pathetic eternally insecure platform. Truth of the matter is it's rather imbecile and sophomoronic to strive for an air of superiority when one is still on Windows. Most of the IE users caught on that graph probably don't have a clue about security and what's at stake. But the Firefox users who've seen it definitely do.

They've had a chance to think about it and they still don't come up any better.

One Apple hater gave three reasons why Windows is best.

Too many driver issues for Linux on Wintel hardware.

Lots more software titles available for Windows.

'I hate Apple.'

Try as one might, one can't find reason #3 in any book on computer security or comparative operating systems. Deciding to not buy an Apple computer because one 'hates Apple' is far dumber than buying Apple hardware simply because one loves Apple. Both approaches are puerile (if not infantile). Choice of a secure operating system is vital in today's age. Ignoring a viable alternative on such grounds is retarded.

A lot of people might not like Apple, or like their 'Mac community', but they can still make rational decisions about their personal computing platform. There are myriad engineers in the AV industry who make a living fighting Windows viruses but wouldn't dream of using anything but a Mac at home. The entire WikiLeaks staff use Macs. FBI field agents prefer them. This can't be a coincidence.

None of them have to 'like' Apple. All they have to do is rationally choose the best platform. And 'I hate Apple' is not a good argument from an undisturbed rational mind.

The wars between the platforms have been going on for too long. And they must come to an end. This is and has never been about rooting for the home team. This is about the entire planet being secure online. Perhaps the mental midgets of the world will never grasp (and the security gurus continue to find it too much effort to explain) that Windows is, always has been, and always will be endemically insecure.

But something has to be done to make the Internet a peaceful place to hang out. And every time a Windows user gets infected with a another contagious disease, that's one more way the epidemics will proliferate and the disasters will continue. For each and every Windows user shares a collective debt to the others - a debt founded in extraordinary stupidity and often in irrational hatred.

'But we're better than IE users because FF is open source!' O RLY? Is Windows open source?

Apple's Safari is open source, has its own website. OS X is mostly FreeBSD and FreeBSD is open source. Do people saying things like that even understand what open source means? Open source does not mean security, in case they were thinking that, in case they weren't just dropping a name because it sounded cool.

An open source browser atop the world's most pathetic end user product ever doesn't protect anything. The Moz crew (and people from this site have been part of that crew) go overboard to compensate for shortcomings in Windows as best they can. Why? Because it's the right thing to do (that Microsoft will never ever do) and because mental midgets who think they're safe with FF on Windows are always going to blame them if something goes wrong.

Ask any of the 'pretenders to expertise' if they can define and describe 1) an operating system; 2) an OS kernel; 3) privileged mode - and see how far you get. Ask them to explain how the Windows security system is built, what its general philosophy has been, how it's been implemented over the years, and so forth.

Good luck. Anybody can drop names.

Computers are incredibly complex constructions. It's only the simple minded who think they are simple. Trying to explain something complex to such a person is bound to fail - they lack the cerebral wherewithal to deal with it. Best choice is to pull the Internet plug if possible. They hurt people.

The online world's awash in bad guys. The reason they proliferate is twofold.

Windows offers a phat attack area.

Windows is so unbelievably easy to hack.

No Unix system has ever been the victim of a malware epidemic and never will.

People who admit they don't know something can't be accused of being stupid. They can be accused of being ignorant - of not knowing something they should know. But people who admit they don't know something are not the problem. They never have been.

People who don't know something but think they do - they've always been the problem, in all walks of life, in all human endeavours, and it's pointless and hopeless to try to explain something to them, particularly if their best argument for not leaving Windows is 'I hate Apple'.

'I'm gonna tell you something. Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him. Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole. Not talk to him for spitting on the sidewalk. Understand? Now I have done nothing to harm these people, but they are angered with me. So what do they do? Doctor up some income tax for which they have no case. To speak to me like men? No. To harass a peaceful man. I pray to god if I ever have a grievance, I'd have a little more self-respect. One more thing: you have an all-out prize fight, you wait until the fight is over, one guy is left standing. And that's how you know who won.' - Al Capone

'More than a million Microsoft Windows machines were infected with a strain of malware designed to hijack results when users search for keywords at Google.com and other major search engines.' - Brian Krebs